20 October 2009

Accident prone

Some time ago I heard a sad and dreary little discussion on the Radio between two sad and deary little people. One was called Cornwell; the other Pepinster (does that name suggest that she is descended from a bastard line of the Merovingian dynasty? Personally - call me a trendy if you like - I tend to go for the Carolingian Renaissance).

Pope Benedict, Cornwell said, is 'accident prone'. I think this sort of nonsense has to be met head-on. We live in an age of quite hysterical prejudice; against 'Religion'; against Christianity; against Catholicism; against the Pope (in that ascending order). So if he says something erudite, carefully phrased, and carefully considered, this is distorted by those who are either too intellectually challenged to begin to understand it, or are so malevolent that they are determined to distort it (usually both). Accident prone he isn't. And we shouldn't go half-way to meet his enemies by assuming that this is the acceptable formula for distancing ourselves from him.

BTW, my guess is that in the run-up to the Papal visit there will be a crescendo of malevolent and lying abuse against the holy Father from all the usual foghorns and graylings.

And take the lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Williamson. Miraculously, it appears, excommunication is no longer, for the chattering classes, a dangerous and oppressive relic of the Dark Ages; no longer a grim act of aggression by a loathesome theocracy. It is the reaction of first choice by the cuddly people, the nice and the good, if someone dares to question one of their own orthodoxies. Just as calling somebody a heretic is no longer a dangerously medieval denial of the self-evident maxim that everybody has 'their own truth'; in the hands of Jefferts Schori, 'Primate' of some American sect, it is an obvious way to characterise an opponent (to be fair, poor George Carey began this game long before JS had even acquired her first canon lawyer).

'Absolutism' is unpopular, too; it suggests Louis XIV and that most un-Anglo-Saxon of things, 'Arbitrary Power'. Yet apparently Pope Benedict would have been the hero of the day if he had said "What the Hell; I've decide that some blokes will no longer be subjected to penalties because they were uncanonically consecrated; but I'll leave Williamson excommunicate, although he has done nothing else making him in law liable to canonical penalties, because I find his historical opinions distasteful".

5 comments:

By the way, — and please do excuse me if this appears to come out of the blue, — but in the midst of the news that the TAC will probably enjoy communion with Rome by the end of the year, might you be able to tell me what is the position of the SSC in this regard? Are its members as consistently traditional as those of the TAC, or does it vary from parish to parish?

I am a traditional (Roman) Catholic who usually attends the TLM, but when I go to Jersey (which I often do), I have to contend with a liturgically mediocre NO; there is, however, an SSC parish on the island, which I would very much like to be in communion with Rome!

Williamson's hysterical opinions are more than distasteful they are historically without foundation. The only people who accept them are Neo-Nazis with a deep hatred of the Jewish people. They are indeed an outward and visible sign of an inwards and spiritual disgrace. They contrast so much with the published opinions of the Holy Father, who was in Germany when the events which are denied or minimised took place, that they would suggest a different religion.

Fr John Hunwicke

was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. Since 2011, he has been in full communion with the See of S Peter. The opinions expressed on this Blog are not asserted as being those of the Magisterium of the Church, but as the writer's opinions as a private individual. Nevertheless, the writer strives, hopes, and prays that the views he expresses are conformable with and supportive of the Magisterium. In this blog, the letters PF stand for Pope Francis.